IITs to blacklist 20 startups from campus hiring

Many renowned startups, including Flipkart, received a lot of flak recently as they had to forego or delay the joining of most of their campus placement offers leaving many graduate students coasted with no jobs in hand. To prevent any such occurrence this year, the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are likely to blacklist about 20 startups and e-commerce companies this placement season.

The twelve Indian Institute of Technology (IITs) that were present at the All-IIT Placement Committee meeting held at IIT Kanpur have decided to take this measure. Apart from this, a warning will be issued to companies that deferred joining dates, changed job profiles or altered salary terms.

Warning letters will be given to those on the list of first two categories, while those on the third would be barred this year.

E-commerce Company Flipkart will get a warning letter for deferring the date of joining for its IIT hires last year. "Flipkart does not figure in the list of startups that would face a blanket ban as it did not completely withdraw the offers," said All-IIT Placement Committee (AIPC) convener Kaustubha Mohanty.

Flipkart had changed the joining dates of most campus recruits from June to December, indicating company's organizational restructuring as the reason.

He further added, "IITs are unanimous that this kind of behavior will not be tolerated."

Zomato which was banned from the placement season last year, due to a spat over day-one placement slot which was requested by CEO Deepinder Goel, will face a sustained ban for the second year.

The list will be drawn in two weeks, as decided on the AIPC meeting.